Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1896 — OFFICIAL INFORMATION. [ARTICLE]

OFFICIAL INFORMATION.

A Few Interesting Facts About Our Money. Secretary Carlisle has furnished the following answers to some interrogatories propounded to him which no doubt will interest and instruct many: 1. That standard silver dollars of the United States are full legal tender in the payment of all debts, public and private, without regard to amount, unless otherwise specified iu the contract between the parties^ 2. Silver certificates are not legal tender for any amount. *3. Copper cents ana nickle "pieces"are legal tender to theamount of 25 cents. • 4. No silver coins, or copper, or nickle coins are redeemable by law in gold. 5. Subsidiary silver coins, that is half dollars, quarters and dimes, are legal tender to the extent' of $lO, and are redeemable by law in “lawful money” of the United States when presented iu sums of S2O and upwards. The miner coins of copper and nickle are also redeemable in “lawful money” of the United Sates, but the standard silver dollar is not by law redeemable at’all, although the holders of such dollars may deposit them iu the treasury aud receive silver certificates for them.

Senator Elkins of West Virginia says: “I have been a producer of silver over sixteen years, and naturally I am its friend and favor its largest possible use as money, consistent with sound and stable currency. My interest would incline me to favor the free coinage of silver if I could see that it was practicable or'possible, or that it rested upon any sound principles. The people now agitating * the silver question and demanding its free and unlimited coinage at'l6 to 1, when silver is only worth 31 to 1, are its worst enemies apart from the injury it would do the country. I did not |avor the purchasing danse of the Sherman act because I felt, as a citizen, it would increase the production of silver and thereby lessen its value in the markets, and destroy confidence in it as a money. This was the result.” He says that £ree and unlimited coinage would not only drive gold out ot circulation and demoralize business, bat that it would also debase the white metal so as finally to destroy it as money.

The Republican party is unreservedly for sonnd money. It caused the enactment of the law providing for the resumption of speoie payments in 1879; j since then every dollar has been as good as gold. We are unalterably op-

posed to every measure calculated to debase our currency or ..impair the credit of our country. We* Ere therefore opposed to the free coinage of siller, except by international agreCmetit with the loading commercial uatious of the world, which we pledge ourselves lo .promote, and until such an agreement,can be obtained the.existing gold standard must be. preserved. All our silver and paper currency must be maintained at a parity with gold, and we favor all measures designed to maintain inviolably the obligations of the United States, and all our money, whether coin or paper, at the present standard —the standard of the most. enlightened nations of the world.—Republican National Platform, 1896.

Sam Jones is a democrat, but he cannot swallow the Chicago platform. He says: Every plank, or nearly every one ofthem, seems to be stolen audaciously from the populists. lam a sort of a shouting Methodist but just before 1 set in to shouting I always look around to see who else is shouting, and if I don’t like the crowd that is shouting at the time I want to shout, I won’t shout. There are some gangs T won’t march with nor shout with nor gang with. ■*<

Freo silvor is froo trade in its most violent fdrm. It means thocoinago not only of all native silver, but also the unrestricted importation of the discarded silver of the world. It would moan tho reopening of all the. abandoned mines under tho sun, with the American mints as tho dumping ground for their product. Many patriotic Democrats who cannot consistently support -Major McKinley as a Republican will gladly vote for him as an American. Tho foremost principle among those lie represents is that the national, honor must bo protected against enemies from within as well as against fooinen from without. Costa Rica is sick of silver. The United States will be sicker if it yields to its false glitter. If too much of a good thing is bad, and a bad thing is Dover good, thou a thing which is half bad and half good should be let alone so long as we can have that which is all good. We have a notion, that the 4,500,000 depositors in the savings institutions of tho country constitute tho balance of (power. Desiring to get out of the banks as long a dollar as tpoy put in, theso depositors will vote for.McKinley. Silver Democrats have not yet explained how they aro to get hold of the markets of the world with free trade while ignoring other nations in scaling down tho dollar oiic half: Gold Democrats are free to support McKinley without the indorsement of him by u new national convention. Ho is tho only sound money candidate in sight, or likely to be.